Introduction:

Your privacy is very important to me, and you can be confident that your personal information will be kept safe and secure and will only be used for the purpose it was given to me.

I adhere to current data protection legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (EU/2016/679) (the GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.

This privacy notice tells you what I will do with your personal information from initial point of contact through to after your therapy has ended, including:

• Why I can process your information and what purpose I am processing it for :
• Whether you have to provide it to me
• How long I store it for
• Whether there are other recipients of your personal information
• Whether I intend to transfer it to another country,
• Whether I do automated decision-making or profiling, and
• Your data protection rights.

I am happy to chat through any questions you might have about my data protection policy and you can contact me via [anneraecounselling.co.uk)

 ‘Data controller’ is the term used to describe the person/ organisation that collects and stores and has responsibility for people’s personal data. In this instance, the data controller is me.

 I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office ICO:00012179650 My postal address is: 22 Heathcote Road, Twickenham, TW1 1RX.

 My phone number is: 07810 647256

 My email address is: anneraecounselling.co.uk

My lawful basis for holding and using your personal information:

The GDPR states that I must have a lawful basis for processing your personal data.

There are different lawful bases depending on the stage at which I am processing your data.

I have explained these below:

If you have had therapy with me and it has now ended, I will use legitimate interest as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information. If you are currently having therapy or if you are in contact with me to consider therapy, I will process your personal data where it is necessary for the performance of our contract.

The GDPR also makes sure that I look after any sensitive personal information that you may disclose to me appropriately. This type of information is called ‘special category personal information’. The lawful basis for me processing any special categories of personal information is that it is for provision of health treatment (in this case counselling) and necessary for a contract with a health professional (in this case, a contract between me and you).

How I use your information

Initial contact.

When you contact me with an enquiry about my counselling services, I will collect information to help me satisfy your enquiry. This will include your full name.

Alternatively, your GP or other health professional may send me your details when making a referral or a parent or trusted individual may give me your details when making an enquiry on your behalf.

If you decide not to proceed, I will ensure all your personal data is deleted within one month.  If you would like me to delete this information sooner, just let me know. While you are accessing counselling, rest assured that everything you discuss with me is confidential. That confidentiality might only be broken in the following situations:

While you are accessing counselling.

When you agree to go ahead with my counselling services, I will collect the following information. This will include your full name, date of birth, address, telephone number, GP’s details and next of kin.

I will keep a record of your personal details to help the counselling services run smoothly. These details are kept securely in a password protected laptop and are not shared with any third party. I will keep written notes of each session, these are kept in a notebook which is held in a locked cabinet.  For security reasons I do not retain text messages for more than one month.  If there is relevant information contained in a text message I will save a photo of it in whatsapp. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted after one year. 

Once counselling has ended

Your records will be kept for one year from the end of our contact with each other and are then securely destroyed. If you want me to delete your information sooner than this, please tell me.

Confidentiality:

Rest assured that everything you discuss with me is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken either

if information you give me requires me legally to disclose this information.

Examples of legally obliged disclosures include:

acts of terrorism

drug trafficking and money laundering

court orders or subpoenas

Or

when I am permitted by law to break confidentiality because it’s in the public interest (discretionary disclosures). 

Examples of discretionary disclosures:

child protection and safeguarding

protection of vulnerable adults

risk of suicide or serious self-harm or harm to others

I will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.

Your rights

I try to be as open as I can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. You have a right to ask me to delete your personal information, to limit how I use your personal information, or to stop processing your personal information. You also have a right to ask for a copy of any information that I hold about you and to object to the use of your personal data in some circumstances.

You can read more about your rights at ico.org.uk/your-data-matters.

If I do hold information about you I will:

• give you a description of it and where it came from;
• tell you why I am holding it,
• tell you how long I will store your data and how I made this decision;
• tell you who it could be disclosed to;
• let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

You can also ask me at any time to correct any mistakes there may be in the personal information I hold about you. To make a request for any personal information I may hold about you, please put the request in writing addressing it to anneraecounselling@gmail.com

 If you have any complaint about how I handle your personal data, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me by writing or emailing to the contact details given above. I would welcome any suggestions for improving my data protection procedures. If you want to make a formal complaint about the way I have processed your personal information you can contact the ICO which is the statutory body that oversees data protection law in the UK. For more information go to ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

Data security

I take the security of the data I hold about you very seriously and as such I take every effort to make sure it is kept secure.

I use numbers assigned to each individual client, rather than their names and keep information on a password protected document or on a password protected laptop. Paper notes are kept in a locked cabinet.

Visitors to my website:

Visitors to my website When someone visits my website, I use a third-party service, Google analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. I do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone. I do not make, and do not allow Google analytics to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting my website. I use legitimate interests as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information in this way when you visit my website.

Please read the Google Analytics privacy notice if you would like more information.

I use Wordpress as the content management system for my website.

Wordpress  privacy notice here https://en-gb.wordpress.org/about/privacy/

If you complete the contact form on my website we will keep the data that you provide in order to contact you.

I use calendly to book appointments, you can see the privacy policy here https://calendly.com/legal/privacy-notice

This site utilises caching in order to facilitate a faster response time and better user experience. Caching potentially stores a duplicate copy of every web page that is on display on this site. All cache files are temporary, and are never accessed by any third party, except as necessary to obtain technical support from the cache plugin vendor. Cache files expire on a schedule set by the site administrator, but may easily be purged by the admin before their natural expiration, if necessary. We may use QUIC.cloud services to process & cache your data temporarily. Please see https://quic.cloud/privacy-policy/ for more details.

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